


Fragile Soft Machines

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Casual Sex, Friends to Lovers, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Past Iron Bull/Inquisitor, Wants and Needs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-19 22:08:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9462236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: To begin with, Bull's relationship with the Inquisitor falls apart, although they seemed very much in love.To begin with, all that Dorian is offering is a pleasant distraction.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The notes for this story are almost two years old now, although the details have been reworked substantially since I picked it back up. Still: here we go. One of my oldest story ideas, about the scenario in which Bull and the Inquisitor break up right on the cusp of dragon tooth sharing and what that does to Bull's mental state.
> 
> I'm working from outline, but I'm not that good at covering all the content bases, so tags will still be added as I go. 
> 
> Updates Wednesdays.

Dorian was in the tavern when the door slammed, the felled-tree crash of it cutting through the murmuring life of the lower level. Conversation stopped dead. Cabot, hand reaching for a bottle, was frozen. Furious footsteps, not down into the tavern but up and out onto the battlements. And then there was only the absence of sound, spreading in ripples.

It was punctuated, at length, by a further wooden thud from the upper level, like someone tripping over a chest. 

Perhaps.

"Wasn't that—" Stitches said at the next table, his hushed voice carrying to Dorian on the waves of the silence; grunted as Dalish elbowed him in the side.

Nobody came down the stairs.

Nobody's footsteps set the upper level floorboards creaking.

Slowly, the silence ebbed.

"These wretched buildings," the Orlesian gentleman who hoped to be entertained by Dorian that night said. "No hangings to speak of to dampen the sound. How startled I was!"

"It's rather lively, I find," Dorian said. "Do have more brandy."

"Very generous of you," the gentleman said, apparently forgetting that the tab was his. "I shall."

The Chargers' heads were bowed together, the outline of their conversation guessable only in the tightness of their gestures.

"Do excuse me for just one moment," Dorian said, and, standing, inserted himself hand first into the close circle of the Chargers.

That they shuffled to make room for him at all was telling. No bosom friends, he and they.

"He was with the Herald," Krem said. 

"And she, suddenly called away, was careless in her closing of the door," Dorian said. "I see. Nothing amiss at all."

"Hah," Grim said.

"Well, pardon my optimism," Dorian said. "Are you going to take him a drink and pretend it's pure coincidence, or shall I?"

"Won't fly," Krem said, and, at Dorian's move to protest: "He knows about your friend there. I guess you could say it went to shit, but I don't know. You might just make it worse. Can't ever keep your mouth shut."

Dorian gestured acknowledgement in pointed silence, eyebrow raised. 

Krem nodded, matter-of-fact. "Think I'll go check the training schedule. Pass me that bottle. Cheers."

Dorian, so dismissed, settled back into his seat beside the Orlesian gentleman, and lay a hand on his knee, and laughed at the appropriate moment. He was a striking man, and had the unusual virtue of being pleasant towards Dorian, and really, if Dorian was distracted, it was hardly his fault.

He did smell good. Yes. There. That was the appropriate flutter of feeling deep in his gut.

"I see your friends are retiring," that gentleman said. "Perhaps we also might—?"

 

 

 

They might. Slightly stumbling steps up to Dorian's room, a heated kiss against the wall. Dorian, laid out on his stomach, the man's short but pleasingly fat cock stretching him open.

I hope, he thought, that the Bull is well—that it was nothing after all—

But he had a near-stranger's hand twisted in his hair, yanking his head back and sideways to bare his throat for just the sort of bruising kiss Dorian had intimated would be appreciated, and it was difficult to—

"Fuck," Dorian gasped. "Yes, that's it—"

Laughter against his skin.

The thread of his thought snarled and knotted and left him with only a tangle of need. As a distraction from overly complicated thoughts, good sex was among the best.

His hands slid on the sheets, grasped at the headboard.

"Do you want to come now?" the man murmured. "Or should I use my mouth on you after?"

"Oh," Dorian said, absurdly pleased. "After, after—or both."

"A man of ambition. How admirable."

Laughter, again.

Good.

 

 

 

"You had a fun night, huh?"

It was the Bull, of course, dropping himself heavily onto the bench beside Dorian, plate in hand.

"What makes you think that?" Dorian asked. 

"Got a little something," the Bull said. "Right here." He tapped the side of his own neck.

"It may have been tolerable." Dorian raised his hand to touch the bruise without troubling to cover it. It ached pleasantly at the pressure.

"Good on you," the Bull said, laughing, and turned himself to his food. 

How very much himself he was, how alive, close beside Dorian in the crowded hall. Such a definite being, radiating heat from his bare skin, the muscles shifting in his shoulders as he reached for a loaf of bread. Grinning at something some soldier Dorian didn't recognise was saying, that scar of his pulling at his upper lip.

There was a bandage pulled across the knuckles of his right hand. Dorian's gaze settled on it—lingered too long, of course.

The Bull shrugged. Didn't twitch his hand away—of course he wouldn't. He was a professional. But Dorian thought, without identifiable grounds for the idea, that he had wanted to.

"Don't start," the Bull said. "Krem gave me enough shit for it yesterday. _Hey, Chief, if you want to hit something there are targets in the yard._ Like I don't know half of 'em are probably full of bees or some crap."

"Hm," Dorian said, but the Bull didn't react to that at all.

 

 

 

And one was busy, of course. The Bull seemed well enough. Unattached, certainly, but happy to drink and laugh and sing filthy songs. To Dorian, on one memorable occasion, in response to which Dorian had sputtered as he always did, and smiled at the Bull only in a secretive sort of way, after.

Then he'd gone to find someone to have sex with, although he didn't really indulge often these days, in these surroundings, with an impersonal sort of hostility pressing in on him and the good name of the Inquisition meaning rather more to him than the good name of his house. The need had taken him. So he had no idea how that evening in particular had ended, but could guess its outline from several dozen others.

The Bull had stayed where he was and kept right on. Some new target for his bad jokes, definitely. Another drink, almost certainly.

Yes: very much himself.

So Dorian, walking the battlements across the yard from the rotunda to the Commander's office with proposals for battlemage training in hand, didn't react to the sounds of fighting from the training ring at first—not with anything but mild interest. One of them was the Bull, he had known that at once—the bellow was distinctive, to say the least. Cassandra's sharp cries, too. Well, good for them.

He could not under any amount of pressure have been made to admit aloud that he looked their way more out of interest in seeing the Bull covered in sweat than out of any sense of concern, although it was undeniably true. One might appreciate—well—regardless of anything else, he had a certain aesthetic interest. 

All the same, concern didn't take long to follow. Something in the way the Bull's head was bowed, the unhappy curl of his body—just in that first moment when Dorian looked, before the Bull collected himself, squared his shoulders. Laughed, although he stayed leaning on his axe.

Cassandra had fallen back. Impossible to read her expression from such a distance.

Cadash stood, arms folded, at the edge of the ring. Her body was turned entirely towards Cassandra.

He couldn't hear what they were saying. When the Bull left Cadash and Cassandra to their discussion, it wasn't with any particular sign of bad humour—a raised hand, axe swung up over his shoulder—headed, it seemed, towards his rooms. But the image of how he had looked in that first moment held Dorian, suggested to him a particular state of mind, the sense of it as certain and as poorly defined as the feeling that the Bull had wanted to hide his injured hand the week before.

 

 

 

It was on the day Dorian received a letter from Maevaris that Cadash argued with Josephine. He was reading it through on his way to show it to Josephine, in fact, when the shouting reached him. My precious orchid, and so on and so forth, a fascinating piece of information, certain that someone clever could achieve interesting results, I imagine you could—

"Fuck you," Cadash snarled. "No, I'm serious, don't you fucking—"

Josephine, placatory: "I do apologise, I merely meant—"

" _Gossip,_ " Cadash said.

"Gossip is power, my Lady," Josephine said. "Whether you like it or not—"

"Which I don't. It's my personal goddamn business whether I lie with—"

Dorian had frozen in place in the hall outside that sacred house of diplomacy in pure disbelief. His first instinct was to listen; his second to guard the door into the main hall and irritate anyone who might think of passing through into changing their plans.

Reluctantly, he followed this second line of action. A sort of loyalty to a person who didn't care for one's myriad personal qualities seemed to be his lot in life; there it was. Might as well accept it.

Sadly, one couldn't make out any of the words from the doorway. But one could annoy so very many people, so that was alright.

Leliana found him there later, and he was surprised to see her smile.

"You do have your charm after all, I suppose," was all she said, sweeping past him; a scent of lilies clung to her, the melodrama of which Dorian was forced to respect. 

But then she paused by the door to Josephine's room, glancing around as he looked back to see what had halted her footsteps, so that their eyes met, like a question.

He shrugged one shoulder.

"Oh, to be so young," she said.

How old _was_ she? Cadash for one was Dorian's senior.

Call it humour, then.

Remarkable.

"I'll be sure to spread the rumours at once, so that they can be thoroughly discredited due to my nefarious nature," he said. "Will that do?"

She waved a hand, dismissive. "Go along. I'll see if I can unruffle whatever feathers Josie hasn't been able to reach."

 

 

 

No sign of the outburst between Cadash and Josephine in the days that followed, although it was notable that the Bull and Cadash were never within two staff-lengths of one another at any point, in a way which had not been the case previously and which seemed oddly studied. Whether it was evidence of Cadash defying or complying with some diplomatic order Dorian really wasn't qualified to say. Josephine still spoke to Cadash in the same measured and quiet tones at the morning briefings, offering papers for inspection and clarifying the more complex minutiae of treaties which were relevant to the core of the Inquisition as a whole. Cadash was in the ordinary way of things stern and composed, and in the ordinary way of things still let a smile loosen her mouth when Sera made a filthy joke. There was no sniping between them.

But for Cadash to have lost her temper so—

His gaze darted sideways to the Bull. His face in profile was focused. Just as it always was.

Beyond him, Sera leant forward to catch Dorian's eye; looked deliberately to the Bull, and then to Cadash, and made a face which rather defied description, but which was definitely calculate to make Dorian laugh at an inappropriate moment.

If he refrained, she was probably going to escalate.

He refrained.

The Bull's eye flicked over to him, and he thought for a moment that the Bull was smiling about the whole thing.

But the Bull shifted in his seat, settled deeper into it, eye back on the discussion of trade agreements—and it was gone.

It was the fact that he didn't really smile, more than anything, that cemented Dorian's suspicions.


	2. Chapter 2

It was to be Western Orlais next. A long journey towards quite literally blighted desert, with perhaps the odd cursed ruin and so on to punctuate the monotony. As a rule, any of Cadash's personal cadre with no pressing reason to remain in Skyhold moved out with the Inquisitor; he himself had pleaded research, and she had been all too ready to grant dispensation. An uneasy peace between the two of them. Not like with Vivienne—one might argue with Vivienne—he did. She understood which barbs were meant to wound.

Cadash, though—

And of course he'd made an arse of himself in front of her often enough, if it came to that. Hard to see oneself clearly, one's worldview skewed by upbringing. And then one was defensive about it, like an idiot. Regardless: he liked her, probably, considerably better than she liked him.

More surprising than Dorian's own dispensation was the fact that the Bull still sat in the tavern, long after anyone else who was anyone had retreated to their quarters in preparation for the coming journey.

He was an unusually solitary figure, back to the wall, tankard placed on the bench beside him and apparently forgotten. Eye passive.

Dorian's suspicions coalesced again. The unease. The moments, only moments, that had stuck in his mind— 

He took the other end of the bench, allowing the Bull his tankard-marked space.

"Not packing?" he asked. "Not carousing with your boys, before you have to leave them unsupervised to teach the soldiers bad habits?"

"No need," the Bull said. "Not going anywhere. Got plenty to do here. Figured I should take the boys out on a few tours myself before they forget my face."

"As though anyone could," Dorian said.

The Bull laughed. "Aww, you like my face?"

"I didn't say _that._ " Dorian glanced to the serving girl he rather thought the Bull had called Lis on some earlier occasion, who was shooting him a questioning look, and back to the Bull. "What're you drinking, precisely? Some sort of terrible Fereldan thing made largely of piss? Ah, well. Yes, we'll take two."

"You spend a lot of time pretending not to like things."

"You spend a lot of time pretending not to have feelings," Dorian shot back. Did not, by effort, show his wince.

"Hey," the Bull said, "Ben-Hassrath. What did you expect?"

The words _Tal-Vashoth_ stayed carefully away from Dorian's tongue. They weren't so vicious to each other as all that. Another person who understood sharp-edged word games, the Bull. But they couldn't be too sharp, all the same, could they—

It was easier to remember that in the quieter moments, when not at risk of being pulled along by the rhythm of performed antagonism into the real thing.

"Well, regardless," Dorian said, "things clearly went badly with the Lady Inquisitor, and you can't tell me you don't care for her, because I know for a fact that you do. You were proud of it, and now it's nothing, and you're avoiding each other, and what I am _trying_ to do, very badly, because I'm not drunk enough to be kind, is to suggest that it might actually be useful to talk about it with someone."

"That was a lot of words," the Bull said. "Slow down. Here, have a drink."

"Yes, yes, thank you. And don't try to distract me."

"Moral support from the 'vint, huh?"

"I may be wrong," Dorian said, "but I seem to remember someone, with whom I could barely hold a civil conversation, asking after my wellbeing on the delightful occasion of my family reunion—I grant, I was rather drunk, but nonetheless—"

"You're pretty sweet sometimes."

"Hah!"

"I'm good, big guy." The Bull clapped him on the shoulder—the bare shoulder, a sudden press of skin to skin that rather upended Dorian's thoughts with the unexpectedness of it. "We called it off. It's fine. The kitchen girls don't seem to mind."

"Hmm." Dorian took a moment to turn over the nuances of this in his mind and considering the surprising lack of gossip that had come his way on one point in particular. "You mean you want me to believe, by association, that you've simply moved on to renew your life of hedonism and all that, but without directly stating that you are, in fact, having sex with the kitchen girls. Or anyone else."

"Reading a lot into shit now."

"Come now," Dorian said. "We're both professional liars here. You aren't having sex with anyone, are you? Not that there's anything wrong with that, if one enjoys a spot of asceticism. I myself have on several occasions gone weeks at a time without considering anyone's penis but my own. The problem is more this petty need to pretend you're unaffected."

The Bull waited for him to be done. Waited _quietly_ , that was the word for it—sunk down deep into himself, still and momentarily subdued.

"I'm not talking about this," he said. "Not tonight."

"I'll accept the admission that there _is_ something to talk about, and also the deferral," Dorian said, with the practiced easy manner he had last needed to use to cover grief. "What do you say we get excruciatingly drunk, seeing as our presence in the field isn't required?"

" _Shit yeah,_ " the Bull said, with considerable strength of feeling. 

 

 

 

"Where _are_ the Chargers, by the way?" Dorian asked, two unexpectedly strong tankards later. "Quite used to seeing you with an entourage, really."

"Got their own party," the Bull said. "No good if the boss is always staring over their shoulders. About time they got to give Krem a headache instead for a bit, too."

"Conveniently leaving you to be morose in peace."

"Yup," the Bull said. "If we're going to talk about my damn feelings after all. Guess being morose with a friend's OK too. Have another drink."

"A friend," Dorian said, and, now feeling rather closer to drunk enough to be kind, refrained from all of the five different pieces of barbed commentary which presented themselves for consideration. "I—see. Well, that's novel and exciting. I rather thought I was imagining it. To friendship, then."

They clunked their tankards carelessly together, ale slopping over the Bull's fingers.

He licked them clean in an almost absent-minded way, which left Dorian's body in its usual irritating state of slight arousal, albeit without any sort of intent. Left him suddenly aware, all the same, of the potential for scrutiny in the quiet tavern, given the changed circumstances. Although nobody had done anything wrong. Although everybody very well knew at this point that he had certain tastes. Although the Bull must very well know that Dorian found him attractive—must have known even as Dorian had snapped and prodded at him in the early days, before the Bull had become attached—when he had thought he and the Bull might have a good rough fuck with just the right amount of antagonism and then get on with their lives.

These burst of libido had become a very background thing, predictably present at regular intervals. Typically, he barely considered them. Why should he? One was attracted to plenty of people.

"I think," Dorian said, "we should take a walk. I could use a spot of air."

"Sure," the Bull said. "Hey, Lis, think you can get us a bottle of brandy?"

Of course she could.

 

 

 

Cool air on the battlements, raising gooseflesh on Dorian's shoulder, biting at the bare V of his throat. Oh, he could use teeth on his throat—of another sort, hot and sharp—he would have to go and see if anyone was interested later—why must alcohol make one's body so _fixated_. Some people grew morose or loud. One could suffer those effects rather more easily. But it was years of association, perhaps, that did it. Fucking in the gardens or behind curtains at formal parties, mouth sour with wine and salt with sweat from the fingers pressed between his lips. Bad brandy in the slums, leaving him heavy-headed as he sucked somebody's cock. Measuring looks in Southern taverns leading to fumbling in the dark. Giddy half-drunk laughter as some minor visiting noble fucked him into the mattress in his cramped Skyhold room.

A moment longer and the cold began to help settle that part of his mind.

He sighed; leant forward against the stone and stared at the dizzy drop, let it tug at his already alcohol-buzzing body, unravel him, his mind plumbing the depths and finding them fathomless.

"Hey, don't puke," the Bull said, making it to the top of the stairs behind him, footsteps not stopping until he must be very close.

"What do you take me for," Dorian murmured. "I'm not so drunk as all that. I'm barely more than tipsy. I could manage a great deal more. Perhaps I ought to prove it this instant."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound like a great idea."

"No? Whatever happened getting excruciatingly drunk? Are you going to mother me now?"

"You're just not looking so great. Give it a minute, then we'll start on the brandy."

"You're _going to mother me,_ " Dorian said, turning to jab at the Bull's chest, the knowledge of the drop behind him scraping the edges of his mind. "And here I thought I could be good to you for once. See if I try that again. You just can't help trying to take care of people, can you. I suppose it's a useful distraction tactic. You've been practicing it, I think."

"Come here," the Bull said. Drew Dorian back from the parapet with a hand around Dorian's outstretched wrist, sank down with him to sit on the worn stones. The bottle of brandy scraped and clunked as the Bull set it down."You don't like heights, huh?"

"Oh, I love heights. They're terribly charming. The pull of the void and all that. One's life flashing before one's eyes—I've lived a marvelous life, so that part's a highlight. Besides, it's good for a necromancer—remember you will die—so on and so forth."

He shifted until he could lean his back against the parapet—the lower part, below the level of the crenellations, presented no dizzying possibilities. The Bull followed him. No space between them now: they sat side by side, the Bull's bare skin radiating heat. Not shoulder to shoulder, certainly, but only because the Bull was so unacceptably large. Dorian's shoulder pressed to his upper arm.

The Bull's hand, resting on his knee beside Dorian's calf, curled a little, fingers digging into the fabric of his trousers.

They sat in silence as the night guard passed by, armour clinking, her footsteps echoing through the quiet fortress. She didn't look down at them. Didn't slow her steps.

The deeper silence that settled in her wake was tense. The Bull's head had tipped forward, the points of his horns angling towards the courtyard.

He brought his hand up to his face. Scrubbed at it, at his one remaining eye, as though—but surely not—

"Crap," he said, his voice—strange. Not wavering with tears, nothing so trite and dramatic but—unusual, somehow. I'm being allowed something, Dorian thought. He wouldn't just—I'm being _allowed._ Friendship, then, truly. 

How bizarre.

He laid his hand on the Bull's knee, deeply uncertain. Coarse cloth. That radiating heat again. So warm, the whole of him.

"Fucked it up," the Bull said. "Fucking— _shit_."

Tension in every part of his body, sudden under Dorian's hand, against his side. As though the Bull wanted to punch something, or curl in on himself completely.

Instead he stretched his hands out, lay them back on his thighs. Uncurled the fingers slowly so that they touched Dorian's, a slight point of skin contact.

It looked rather like meditation: the Bull's eye closed, his shoulders lowering slowly. Deep breaths.

Dorian waited until the Bull opened his eye again. Considered the wisdom of the question, but eventually asked: 

"She ended things because you did something wrong?"

The Bull slumped, his last breath turning into a grunt.

"Nah. I ended things 'cause I did shit wrong."

A great many terrible possibilities could be contained in that ambiguous blank-voiced line. 

Dorian found that he didn't believe in any of them. 

"You're in love with her," he said, slowly. "Truly in love. And still—"

"Yeah," the Bull said. "Not my story to tell, I guess. But it's—I figured I knew what I was doing. That's when things usually go to shit, right?"

He was thinking of something very specific, probably, his voice wistful. Some other time, some other thing—another love, or another loss. 

"I wasn't good for her," he said.

The silence that fell seemed harsh, a sharply oppressive thing. Dorian barely breathed. The Bull seemed also to be holding his breath, his stillness terrible.

"Bull," Dorian said, hushed. Breathed, finally. He couldn't think of a single thing to continue with. No light witticism to defuse the moment, and no profound words of comfort—not that he'd ever been good at the latter.

"Yep," the Bull said. His voice had fallen back into place: a sudden and complete change, the lights extinguished, the display over. "That's about how it is. Think you're ready for another drink now. I sure as shit am."

"Yes, of course."

"My room?"

Dorian gestured assent, pulled himself to his feet. Offered the Bull his hand with a flourish as though he had the physical strength to lever the Bull to his feet—got a laugh for it.

The Bull took his hand.

"I don't know how you stay so warm," Dorian said, laughing too. "Well, come on. We'll run out of night if we don't get to it."


	3. Chapter 3

It was a clear morning, the sunlight falling through the dusty windows and leaving their criss-cross pattern spilled across the bed.

"Ugh," Dorian said to the pillow.

The pillow smelled strongly of the Bull, which he would probably be able to find something insulting to say about later. Just then his head was too heavy with the after-effects of a good deal of drink for him to summon anything even distantly related to eloquence.

"Yeah, pretty much." The Bull, from somewhere near the door. A heavy sigh. "They've headed out. Guess I'll go give Krem shit. He's more hungover than I am. Hang out here as long as you need. Water on the table."

"Mothering people," Dorian said. "A distraction tactic. Yes, yes, thank you, please leave."

The Bull laughed, but muted, a little bit careful—for the good of both of their heads, presumably.

No needling back. No _think you'll find it's my room._ The Bull simply—went.

Dorian stretched, feeling the stiffness in his lower back from sitting too long against walls—the battlements, the Bull's room. His mouth felt vile. But there it was: a night of drinking had the effect that it had. One had at least managed not to do anything ill-advised involving one's cock.

I wonder, he thought, when I last woke up in a man's bed without having had sex with him first—

His mind skittered around the answer, which involved Felix and was therefore not to be approached too closely. Look here, instead: Sera's bed, with Sera draped across his stomach, still snoring. Safer. 

All this drinking with friends who didn't expect one to murder them. All this having friends one didn't want to murder with whom to drink.

Well. Considering this lack of murderous inclination, it seemed safe to doze for a while longer.

 

 

 

The Bull came and went with the Chargers. Skyhold, already left comparatively quiet by the absence of the Inquisitor, seemed rather insufferably dull when they were absent—annoying Cullen would only get one so far in life, and annoying Leliana remained firmly out of the question. A strangely changeable woman, vicious and charmingly ridiculous and vicious again in the space of a few hours. Or breaths, possibly. Sitting in the library he heard nothing of her words, the space between the floors wide. But he heard the sharpness, and he heard the laughter, the startled shuffling of the ravens that followed.

She would know, of course, far more about the Bull's state than he could tease out—but there was an immediate guilt to the thought, the recognition of Tevinter rules of engagement quick on its heels. One might discuss with friends—but to involve a spymaster—

How was one to distract oneself from entirely useless lines of thought? The Bull was out of his reach, and Cadash by now very distant indeed. What use was there wondering about any of it?

Well then. Chatting with some visiting dignitaries was passable, and if one gleaned from them some ideas about the social life of Orlais, say—if one found that there were after all parties and so on which one might insinuate oneself into—

When one of Josephine's messengers came with books for him from Maevaris Tilani's private library, it was idle impulse that made him say:

"Of course, there's that ball coming up in Lydes—the Inquisition ought to be represented, don't you think? But I'm sure it's beyond Josephine's ability to arrange an invitation for me. A shame. I do look so good in formal attire."

 

 

 

And when the Bull and his Chargers returned, one could hardly miss it, even from the library. They were raucous already in the yard, clattering and jostling together, shouting to friends. The Bull's laugh cut across even that noise, and Dorian was glad, after his boredom, to hear it.

Dorian went to the window.

Josephine, hurrying down the steps from the main hall with her clipboard in hand, was calling questions—some minor matter, one assumed—no secretive debriefing required. The Bull was laughing—tossed her a purse of coins which was probably full of coin. The nonchalance with which she caught it was honestly quite impressive for such a supposedly delicate Antivan lady.

The Bull, stretching, looked up; hand to the back of the neck, easing one of those damnable travel-aches. Rather a strain on the neck, surely, those ludicrous horns, and one couldn't call him young, after all. His laughter slipped away in that moment, with his head tilted away from the crowd. His expression was unclear when not so exaggerated. But quite probably he looked tired.

He saw Dorian, though, as he looked; recovered his grin, and raised a hand in greeting.

The he was turned away again, before Dorian had a moment to respond.

 

 

 

So. Friends. Mutual acquaintances, at least.

The Chargers had made space for Dorian on the night of the incident, although most of them were deeply suspicious of him. They made space for him now, too—the smallest nod from Cremisius as Dorian took a vacant chair, and a cheer from Rocky and a couple of his friends when Dorian ordered a very large bottle of something cheap.

"And I take from this warm acceptance of my presence," Dorian said, passing the bottle of uncertain spirit to the elf generally known as Dalish, who glanced around uncertainly but took it, "that he's been sulking."

"'Course he's been sulking," Cremisius said. "At least he got to punch some guys. Pretty sure that helped."

"Hah!" Dorian accepted the bottle back, and took a mouth-searing swallow directly from it. "Well, it generally does. But he's not drinking tonight?"

Cremisius and Stitches glanced at each other. Stitches shrugged slightly.

"Guess not," Cremisius said.

A good thing, really, if the Bull had recognised the need for a night alone. A good thing if he had found in himself the inclination to find a bed-partner, for that matter, although that seemed a little much to hope for.

The Bull had been like this once before, of course—the weight of his mood, although not drawn from the same source. They all remembered it with complete clarity. It had in fact been in connection with the Bull's expulsion from the Qun that he and Dorian had first made an effort to get staggeringly drunk together and engage in maudlin conversation about their respective homelands. 

"I would stand in as your leader," Dorian said, "but I'm afraid Skinner would skin me, and also that it's rather too cold for those of us with any sort of ordinary physiology to be shown in a favourable light with no shirt on—"

"You've done your spying," Skinner said. "Fuck off."

She raised the bottle, currently in her possession, like a salute.

"Yes, that was what I was getting to," Dorian said. "And I'd call it friendly concern, but what do I know?"

Skinner snorted; Dorian bowed deeply to her with a little flourish.

"Enjoy your drinking."

"Always do," Rocky said.

 

 

 

"And I hear from your travelling circus that you remain dejected and so on, crushed by the weight of the world, however it is one ought to put it," Dorian said. Mid-morning, with snow in the air, the sky grey and heavy. They sat on the upper level of the armoury—Dorian, as the recent intruder, balanced on the edge of the table at which the Bull worked. They were each nominally engaged in the sort of maintenance of equipment that the Inquisition paid good money to make sure they didn't need to keep up with themselves. Polish and grease, whetstones and heavy needles.

"Oh, yeah." The clink of metal and the creak of leather as the Bull tested his armour piece by piece. "Real shitty. Nah, Dorian, it's sweet of you, but I'm good."

"I very much am not sweet."

"Uh-huh."

"I am a very bad man, in fact," Dorian said, in his most proper tones. "Ask anyone at all. A villain and a pervert. I'm here to seduce you, or else make a blood sacrifice of you. Possibly these are the same thing."

The Bull grunted.

"Poor taste?"

"Yeah."

"Ah, well."

"Didn't expect you to come out and say you'd been bothering my boys for information," the Bull said after a period of silence in which they sorted through their respective gear. "Figured I was meant to pretend I didn't know."

He looked up at Dorian, his smile lopsided where it was usually broad, and Dorian was suddenly so fond—of this great brute of a man, objectively terrible as he was.

He looked away.

"As though I think I can keep things from you. I'm not so very stupid."

"And you didn't just ask me 'cause I'd say I was fine and to stop prodding."

"Exactly," Dorian said—looked down at the Bull's hands, the neat nails pressed into the cloth he was holding, the fingers tense. "But I'm not sneaking around behind your back. I'm asking the people who care about you what they think, and then I'm talking to you about it. Are you quite done with that rag, or are you going to keep on digging holes in it with your ridiculous claws?"

The Bull looked down at his hands with a mild expression, and then, face not moving in the slightest, very deliberately relaxed his hand. 

"I'm fine," the Bull said. "Stop prodding."

"You tell such fibs."

But the Bull said it with humour, in truth. Quiet humour, not the usual glee he told puns with or the way he delivered innuendo. Something else altogether.

"Hey," the Bull said. "Work or get out."

Dorian laughed, and snatched the rag from the Bull's slack grasp, and took great delight in the fact that the Bull very much did snigger when Dorian started polishing his staff.

"Ugh," he said. "I detest you."

 

 

 

"No, look," Dorian said. "Look. It's a lovely theory, really very pretty, and I congratulate you on that, but aren't you forgetting about Val Foret?"

"Like anyone could forget Val Foret," the Bull said darkly.

"Wait, what? Were you subject to some sort of terribly traumatic experience in Val Foret? Assaulted by the local architecture? A run-in with a particularly fearsome dowager?"

"Fell out a window," the Bull said. "A bell-tower window. You want the story, or you want to keep arguing about shit I understand better than you?"

"I take that as a challenge, you realise," Dorian said. "Oh, no, you _do_ realise. I'm being an entertaining little diversion for you again. Very well. By all means. Tell me why Val Foret is irrelevant to the Duchess's little amateur smuggling operation. Or how you fell out of a window. I'm not particular."

They were sitting in the Bull's room, the hour late and the wine bottle empty. The Bull had refrained from commenting when Dorian stuck his feet under the Bull's thigh for warmth, and so there they sat, the Bull on the edge of the bed flipping through his papers, and Dorian leaning back against the headboard, considering the spiderwebbed lines stretched across the ceiling, plaster cracking away from the wood.

The Bull lets his shoulders slump in moments like this. Lets himself fold, very slightly. Some silent decision he's reached, that Dorian can be—well, something safe, at any rate.

A Qunari trusts a mage. Even a former Qunari.

"Yeah," the Bull said, putting his papers aside with sudden decisiveness. The movement shifted him away from Dorian's feet, leaving Dorian with the sudden shock of cold air for a moment, then relief at the warm weight's return. "Alright. The window."

A classic tale, full of all the usual sort of bravado and so on as far as the content went—the kind of tale usually told for a broad audience, with pauses for laughter. Yeah, and that's when Rocky said, well, blow _this_ —

The Bull told it more quietly then. Testing out that humour of his that Dorian had first noticed properly only the other day, that wry kind.

He's really not feeling well, Dorian thought. 

But he's trying.

Something distinct from pretending. Not only masking. Not completely masking. Or was he wrong? Studying the Bull too closely—?

Story finished, the Bull sank back onto the bed, lying crosswise. 

"Gonna sleep here?" he asked.

Dorian extracted one foot from under the Bull's legs to kick him gently in the side. "What an indecent proposition. The staff will _talk._ Handkerchiefs will be fluttered."

The Bull snorted. In fact it would make the fourth time recently that they'd fallen asleep in the same bed, which was only practical if it was so bloody cold outside and one was drunk and also lived on the other side of the keep. He'd done the same with Sera often enough—yes, think of that, return to that idea, a very safe point of association indeed.

"Pretty comfortable with you here," the Bull said.

"I steal the blankets, snore, and fart incessantly, if you're to be believed."

"Yup."

Alarm, for a moment, punched through his throat—irrational—people needn't have ulterior motives for everything. In this respect, the Bull was quite open. But the idea that his presence could be a source of simple comfort to another person was—

"Absolutely ridiculous. No, no, I think I'll drag myself back to my own bed for once."

"Okay," the Bull said.

"You're leaving again tomorrow and I know it's difficult for anyone to ignore my charming presence for long enough to sleep properly."

The Bull waved his hand at Dorian. The rest of him remained unmoving.

"Goodnight, Bull," Dorian said, and, receiving only an indistinct noise of agreement in response, patted the Bull fondly on the leg and made his exit.


	4. Chapter 4

"You must understand," Josephine said, "that you are not attending this party as a representative of the Inquisition. While it would be in my power to obtain such an invitation for you—"

Dorian smirked.

Her expression didn't shift.

"—I would hate to see the Inquisitor skin you for making a wrong move."

"Skin _us,_ surely."

"Skin us, yes. Maker, it sounds as though I think her a monster."

"Nothing wrong with a little melodrama, I think," Dorian said. "The Inquisitor is a fine woman, and would probably only give us a deeply disappointed look, which I confess I find a terrifying enough prospect. Very well then. I am to attend as my charming self, armed only with my family name."

"Quite."

"Josephine, my dear," Dorian said, "you are a treasure."

"And of course, should you happen to overhear anything which might be be of benefit—"

"Then I will gather up those little trinkets like a magpie and deliver them into the hands of our corvid-loving friend. Yes."

"Into _my_ hands, thank you," Josephine said, with a rather exasperated look which Dorian very much suspected was not directed at him but at the object of their conversation.

 

 

 

Word was that the Inquisitor had turned to the East again, although the full force she travelled with would make slow work of the journey messenger-birds had covered in a space of days. Rumours about the Wardens, already whispered for months now, had taken a firmer hold. 

The Bull was still gone—a longer absence this time, up to something in Orlais that he'd only talked about with Leliana. Pieces of a deeply complicated campaign, from the apparently trivial to the inescapably vast. Fascinating, to watch the movement of it—the flow of people in and out of the gates below, the hurry of footsteps above. The map around which people crowded for council became heavily annotated and frequently adjusted. Letters piled up on Josephine's desk. Dorian himself exchanged sharp correspondence with allies both definite and dubious, the flow of these letters slower. 

And one had one's books, of course. Such as they were—such as the south could conceive of or permit.

And one grew _dull,_ and so one took measures in which pleasure and business could be mixed. It became Wintersend, and so also Dorian's turn to travel.

 

 

 

The Inquisition's representatives did not wear masks to Orlesian balls. This was a matter of principle: you see, we have nothing to hide. Members of the Inquisition attending as private persons might do as they pleased, and although Dorian found the masks ridiculous and a sign of a nation which didn't take the business of lying as seriously as it thought, he had a fancy to try something new. One had done one's share of spinning elaborate falsehoods bare-faced at the Winter Palace, and now one had the freedom to play ridiculous games. So it was a trip to Val Royeaux first, and a wonderful afternoon spent dismissing the suggestions of a very pompous tailor as alternately trite, tasteless and of a wholly unacceptable colour. With the results of one's labours, one turned again Southward.

Lydes glittered. Lanterns were hung from the buildings, reflecting from the gold paint and ornamentation with which the finer houses were inevitably decorated. The streets were crowded in the dusk, those in fine clothes flowing up the hill towards the minor palace which was to host them while the general populace gathered in restaurants and taverns, and lit fires in the centres of the broad squares for the night's celebrations. The air was cold, prickling at Dorian's skin through his cloak. It smelled rather as though it might snow—and what a horror that one could identify that edge to the air now.

"Yes, quite fine for such a small city," Dorian said, asked at the door of the palace for his opinion. "Rather charming, in its own way. Not everywhere can be Minrathous, after all."

"Why," the lady who had enquired after his opinion said, with a practiced little laugh, "I do believe we are being snubbed!"

Dorian smiled, his mouth visible below the edge of his black and silver mask. "I speak simply of the places to which I am accustomed. One must be allowed a one's quirks—I'm quite sure that if you were in Tevinter you should compare it to Val Royeaux, and I'm also quite sure that you would find it strange."

"But is it not truly frightful? One hears such stories—"

"Oh, yes," Dorian said. "Ever so. No, madame, do go in before me."

 

 

 

And so one stood there before the assembled nobility of the South, and bowed precisely as deeply as one ought but in the Tevinter fashion rather than the Orlesian, and was announced as _Dorian Pavus of Minrathous_.

Oddly enough, it was Cremisius that Dorian caught sight of first. Reasonably it ought to have been the Bull, head and shoulders above the surrounding crowd and—oh, how upset Josephine would be—definitely shirtless. But the Bull had been momentarily concealed by some pillar or statue, and so it Cremisius it was, unmasked and smartly dressed in clothes which nonetheless were more indicative of a soldier's status than an aristocrat's. He had turned towards the door when Dorian was announced, and stood now with eyebrows raised

Dorian smiled in his direction, but turned away, noting his own surprised reaction and putting it carefully to one side. Of course the Chargers attended functions and so on. They were popular. An interesting novelty. And the Bull had his own interest in knowing what everyone was getting up to and who had their fingers in which pies—so to speak.

He allowed himself to be carried by the flow of the party through some half-dozen conversations with diverse people, the majority of them of a conventional turn of mind, which was a fine thing, because one could insult them freely—he caught sight of the Bull several times, generally with wide-eyed admirers in attendance—he accepted one or two drinks. The ham did not, on this occasion, taste of despair—despair was, one presumed, now rather passé, having had its season.

He came, finally, into the Bull's immediate presence—saw that the Bull was painted in elaborate black vitaar, but also that it was of the ceremonial sort, which at least meant nobody would be accidentally poisoned.

A fancy took him.

"Goodness," he said, looking up at the Bull. "What a novelty. A Vashoth at a fine party."

A beat. Yes, that little pretense of ignorance was enough of a cue for the Bull to follow—of course it was.

"Says some Tevinter guy in the South."

"Ah, yes. Well, I am novel in every situation. Dorian Pavus, at your service."

The Bull laughed. "Service, huh? To a mercenary _ox_ man? Sounds risky to me."

"I adore risks," Dorian said. "They delight me. Shall I risk some more by offering you a drink?"

"Not just going to stare at my rack?"

"I hardly see why I can't do both."

The smallest twitch of the Bull's mouth. Later, they might have the opportunity to collapse in hysterics together.

"Alright," the Bull said. "The Iron Bull, at your service if you've got the coin for it."

"Oh, like _that_ ," Dorian said.

"Mercenary work, Lord Pavus. Dirty-minded, aren't you? You want those services, I know some guys."

"Filthy. And—men? Ah, how easily I'm read. But very well. A drink. I'll see if i can't find you something pink. The incongruity would be amusing, I fancy."

The Bull laughed.

 

 

 

By the time Dorian made his way back to the Bull, the damnable man had acquired some new admirers: two women stood talking with him, one in rich blue and gold rather like the colours of the buildings, the other in pale pink satin.

"Oh my," the woman in blue said as Dorian handed the Bull his drink with a little bow, introductions having been made. "What a picture you make side by side! Qunari and Tevinter. I ought to paint it."

"You ought!" Dorian said. "What a delightful idea. Imagine how shocking it would be. We could kiss. I could send a reproduction to the Magisterium and see how many elderly Magisters' hearts I could cause to fail at once. Are you exhibiting this season?"

"But of course! You must come and see. _Certain_ ladies wish me to fail, because they think my motifs inappropriate. How small-minded some people can be. But not you, I fancy? You are—"

"A scandal in motion," Dorian said serenely. "I take pride in it. Will you dance with me?"

"Oh, with a _Tevinter_ —of course!"

 

 

 

One did indeed learn things, in little fragments—sly allusions or moments of carelessness. Orlesians did not dance so well as all that—they might play to the death, as they claimed, but not with such very great frequency. Antiva, for all its many foibles, outstripped them easily; Tevinter by leagues.

"Good to see someone having fun," the Bull said, joining him in leaning against a rail above the dance floor. "Most of this lot are too busy watching their backs to really get into it. You, though—"

"Wondering whether I'm careless or stupid? Looking to exploit my weaknesses for intelligence?"

The Bull's laughter rumbled in his chest.

"You're thinking I'm a _spy_ ," he said with evident pleasure. "Man, this party is way better than I expected."

He glanced to Dorian, raised his one intact eyebrow like a question. Are we still playing? He'd sounded like he wanted them to still be playing. Like he really was getting a kick out of it.

Dorian made a quick gesture of confirmation, turned back to the floor. 

"Well," he said, "you may report that I find this season's sleeves for men's jackets deplorable—also that Orlesian wine remains inferior—that Dorian Pavus is as yet unreformed and may easily be distracted by a man with good muscles—"

"Good to know," the Bull said. "Hey, you want me to flex for you?"

He was easy here—working in a more diligent way to appear easy. None of the tension that flitted through him in moments when they sat together and talked. Either he forgot it for the moment, or he suppressed it for the moment.

The latter was the more likely, although the former would have been preferable.

"Certainly not," Dorian said. "What a disgusting prospect."

They had reached the point in the game where Dorian would ordinarily find a corner behind a hanging or similar and see about getting his hand into someone's trousers. He considered it for an idle moment—but of course the Bull was still raw, and he supposed it might theoretically interfere with their friendship—not a great deal of experience was available to him on that point.

 

 

 

In the gardens there were few people, given the time of year—they would come out later in concession to tradition, but remained otherwise indoors in greater comfort. There was no snow on the ground, although frost was settling on the balustrades and on the statues, turning their white surfaces crystalline. 

"Well," Dorian said, "this was a pleasant surprise."

He was outright grinning at the Bull now, he knew—didn't bother to fight it.

"Thought I was disgusting," the Bull said, and he was grinning too.

They turned to walk the gardens, and Dorian was glad for the clean air, despite the chill. It had grown stuffy indoors.

"Oh, Dorian Pavus of Minrathous certainly thinks so."

"And Dorian who throws books for fun?"

"Finds you tolerable," Dorian said. "Ah, but I've wasted my opportunity to have sex with another Chevalier. That _is_ the main purpose of these functions, as I understand it."

"Nah." The Bull nudged Dorian in the side, a now-familiar gesture. "Meant to kiss passionately in the prettiest spot you can find and then, I don't know, I give you a fancy handkerchief covered in some kind of flowery shit and tell you I'll think of you always, but you get married to some guy who has more money than me, and we—"

"I don't know who allowed you to read melodramatic novels."

"Nah, Orlesians just love to play those games. Think they get off on never being happy. Seen it enough times."

"Well then. Is it to be magnificent despair? We two, having made one another's acquaintance at this fine event, formed a strong attachment, must now kiss—over there, I think—yes, just by the balustrade with the view over the lower garden—must now kiss and then part forever. I shall perhaps swoon once you have left me. Wouldn't that be the thing?"

He turned to look at the Bull as he spoke, taking a step backwards—stumbled a little, one hoped in a way which looked artful rather than entirely accidental, although an accident it was—

The Bull's hand caught his hip and steadied him. Dorian considered puffing up in indignation, which would be the most characteristic response—but it had been a good night, and he was in high spirits.

He laughed.

"Yeah, something like that," the Bull said. "Oh, Dorian, how will I live without you? Kiss me!"

"That voice was absolutely not attractive," Dorian said. "Lout."

The Bull drew him closer. His expression was the lightest that Dorian had seen in months, full of laughter of his own.

"Great big savage, right?" he said.

"Great big _idiot_."

He made sure that the Bull's hand was still secure on his hip, and then bent himself backwards, as though to collapse.

The Bull followed him. A great hand on Dorian's back.

Dorian laughed up at him, not suppressed but open, the sound very clear in the still garden.

He was still laughing when they kissed, lips parted against the Bull's although the kiss wasn't a deep one. The Bull's breath was warm against Dorian's cold lips—his stubble scratched against Dorian's jaw—his hand curled slightly, fingers dragging across Dorian's shoulderblade. There was a spark, yes, of something there—

If they had sex, it would be a lot of fun, wouldn't it? Yes. Not some great romance, but they'd do very well.

"Oh, my brave and rather smelly hero," Dorian said grandly, with only a very bare space between their lips, and the Bull's entire body shook, his forehead bowing to Dorian's as the ridiculousness of the moment grew. "Shall we now part and begin the tragedy?"

The Bull pulled back, straightening up. He patted Dorian on the back, and withdrew that hand; on the hip, and withdrew the other. But he was still full of humour, his face lively with it.

Dorian settled his jacket back into place with a few quick motions—familiar and practiced, although usually required after rather more exertion than one comedic kiss.

"I don't know," the Bull said. "Thought you might want to go have a real party with the boys after this stuffy shit's done. Dalish'll probably dance on the bonfire again, wouldn't want to miss that."

"Ah, with her special archer's powers, yes," Dorian said. "Well, by all means, if my presence at your uncouth revelry would make you happy."

One expected some sort of comeback, of course.

"Yeah," the Bull said simply.

"Oh."

The Bull looked at him. Dorian had the fleeting but uncomfortable sense of being dissected. 

"Your call."

"Well," Dorian said, disarmed and rather disconcerted yet again by the entire business of friendship, "yes. Yes. I'll come with you—oh, don't make the wretched joke. I can still change my mind."

"Just this once," the Bull said. "Come on. _Come together_."

"Ugh," Dorian said, and followed the Bull back inside, glad at the prospect of being able to warm his hands.


	5. Chapter 5

Certainly, the Chargers knew how to throw a party, in the crudest way possible—no, not quite the crudest, actually. One _had_ been to Kirkwall. Nonetheless: here it was. Wintersend night, and let the Orlesians nobles have their fine approximation of the celebration—out here, people meant business.

The Chargers had commandeered the yard attached to an inn on the outskirts of the city, and presumably also the inn itself. It had been only Cremisius and the Bull at the ball, and generally Dorian had only drunk with the senior members of the Chargers, but the entire company was there tonight. Also in attendance was a sizeable cask of some deeply suspect alcohol or other, which Dorian could only identify as _strong_. 

But he hadn't a mind to be terribly drunk. He took a little, and got a smack on the back from Stitches when it burned more than he expected going down, and the rest of his cup he nursed, keeping himself close to the bonfire they'd built—radiating heat across his front, chill from the winter air on his back.

"So you're Tevinter," someone said, bumping up against him in the general mill of people—up against his hip, in fact. A dwarven woman, her beard delicately braided and her hair a complete mess in a way which indicated she might have lost a fight with the bonfire. "Fidget," she said, when he looked down at her, and it was only by virtue of extended acquaintance with the Bull's nickname distribution practices that he didn't find himself taken aback. 

"Did the mustache give it away? Perhaps the evil laugh?"

"Oh. A funny Tevinter." She grinned up at him. "I'm from under Tevinter."

"Ah! An embassy child?"

"Yeah, that's me. A real diplomat."

Her hands were restless—fidgeting, indeed, against each other—plucking at her sleeves. Her expression, though, was amused.

"And how have you been enjoying your diplomatic posting to the South?"

"Better than I enjoyed my diplomatic posting to scrubbing dishes until I could be nice. Always broke them."

"And how are you enjoying these quaint traditions?"

"Also more than I enjoyed scrubbing dishes."

"As bad as that?"

She laughed. "It's pretty much friday night as usual but with a bigger fire, so that's cool. Also, we get a bonus."

Dorian glanced to the Bull at that. He wasn't far off, a little way around the edge of the fire, light thrown across his gleeful face so that Dorian could see it very clearly. As he glanced up the Bull glanced his way, and they snagged there, tangled in one another's sudden attention.

"Very fair," Dorian said, although he was still looking at the Bull.

The Bull's face had stilled for a moment.

It flowed easily back into motion, back into whatever story he was telling. But as Dorian looked back to Fidget, the shadow of his horns moved impressively across the wall behind him. He'd stood, Dorian thought. Probably he would come around the fire and insinuate himself into the conversation.

"And you're sad you can't be more naked, right?" Fidget asked. "Tevinter really digs nudity for the big parties. I noticed that."

Broadly speaking, not completely true. True, however, to Dorian's personal experiences. Also, indicative of attendance at a particular class of parties. There was a story _there._

"Well," Dorian said absently, "the night is young."

"For what?" the Bull asked. Yes—there he was, just as expected.

"Nudity." Dorian raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well, hey, if you wanna—"

"Be very careful," Dorian said, "how you finish that sentence. Think of your children."

"Nah," Fidget said, "don't worry. The kids are already drunk."

"You're my favourite, Fidget," the Bull said.

"Okay. I want that in writing so I can wave it under Krem's nose. And I want in on the next special team."

"Ask sober," the Bull called after her as she drifted away. "Hey, how're you doing, Dorian?"

"Both hot and cold," Dorian said.

"Looking pretty hot to me."

Dorian considered this. On the one hand: naturally he was looking very fine, with the most ridiculous layers of Orlesian frippery stripped off to leave his outfit rougher but even more dashing. On the other hand, how _very_ much they had flirted tonight. Naturally he was a little drunk, but not so very—there was something here—

"Hm," he said.

"What, not preening?"

"Of course I'm preening. Quietly. Would you care to take a walk with me again?"

"If that's you asking for sex—"

"Of course I know you're not actually interested in—"

The Bull gave him a look.

"Oh," Dorian said.

 

 

 

They took a walk—all the way around the side of the inn, and through the kitchen door. The kitchen was empty, cleaned down for the night in a way so orderly that Dorian was beginning to get a sense of why the Bull had installed his company here in particular. Through into a hall, corridor in one direction and stairs in the other. From the door in front of them, which must lead to the taproom, the sounds of people talking spilled, lantern-light wavering along the door's bottom edge. 

On this side of the door, nothing moved.

"So," Dorian said, taking a very small mouthful of the unidentifiable alcohol left in his cup, "you'd either like to have sex with me, as one must collect from your unsubtle implications outside, or you'd like your company to _think_ you're having sex with me. I presume so that they stop annoying you about our Inquisitor? I can work with either, of course. I'm a flexible man. But we ought perhaps to actually talk. Yes, I do understand that this is an uncharacteristic request on my part. However."

They regarded one another in silence, which, as close as they were standing, required that Dorian tip his head back. A slightly exposed feeling.

"Yeah," the Bull said. "Okay."

"Okay? To sex? To talking?"

The Bull's mouth pulled out at one corner, not quite a smile. "You call the shots, big guy," he said.

"Your room, please," Dorian said.

Up the stairs. More rooms than one might expect, but all of them small—in the Bull's, once the lamps were lit, only a bed and a small table, under which his pack was stuffed. His axe was wedged into the space between the foot of the bed and the wall. Beneath the bed, there appeared to be several knives.

It was with fondness that Dorian noted all of these facts.

One was perhaps a little tipsy. Well, quite tipsy.

The Bull closed the door.

One ought to remain standing, given how strange this entire episode could become—allow space for a retreat, to more easily leave the Bull to his thoughts. It was out of familiarity that Dorian failed to do this—habit, now, to throw himself down on the Bull's bed. The thought that it wasn't terribly appropriate came belatedly.

Ah, well.

As if by habit, also, the Bull sat himself down beside the bed, back to the edge of the mattress. 

"I was under the impression that you still weren't particularly interested in sex," Dorian said, because it was of course necessary to begin this _somewhere_.

"Yeah," the Bull said. "Uh, about that."

"Yes?"

"It's _complicated._ "

"This," Dorian said, "is a wholly unilluminating answer. Sex is frequently complicated, yes."

The Bull made a frustrated noise between his teeth.

Of course he couldn't articulate it. He had always excelled at the sexual. The emotional? Well.

One had some sympathy, in a backwards way.

Dorian resisted the urge to reach for him. "I really am happy to have sex with you, you know," he said. "What are attractive friends for, after all?"

"I dunno," the Bull said. "I, uh. Don't usually do that."

"What?"

"Have sex with friends."

"You and Cassandra—"

The Bull laughed, which was probably good for him. He laughed for quite a while. "Nah. The flirting was good for her, though. I mean, I would've. But we're more like—comrades."

Dorian rather doubted that, in fact. The last part. Perhaps they had only been comrades back then, he supposed—but all the same. The Bull was very good at narrative storytelling, he had noticed.

"And you and I are, as established, friends—but you can see yourself fondling my cock."

The Bull, who had gone to take a drink from Dorian's abandoned cup, coughed violently, and then made it worse by laughing again. Tipped his head back and wiped at his eye.

Dorian, forgetting himself, patted the Bull on the head, right between the horns. The Bull shook with laughter again. Dorian wondered if his expression matched—why should he think that it didn't—

"Oh, for the love of the Maker's well-formed arse—give me that cup if all you're going to do is spill it on yourself."

Confiscating it, he drank once more, and leaned over to set it on the table. 

"I trust you," the Bull said.

He had grown still. Something about the stillness which reminded Dorian of meditation—of a delicate control which one directed one's entire focus to maintaining. 

"The mage," Dorian said. "The Tevinter mage."

He was too baffled to sound accusatory, which was just as well in the circumstances.

"Yeah," the Bull said.

"The _necromancer._ "

The Bull shrugged.

Dorian stared up at the ceiling, feeling his mind tilt—not the sick dizziness of overindulgence, but an unsteadiness born from trying to rearrange one's understanding of the world.

"And what is it—that you'd trust this terrible deviant to do?"

The Bull was silent for so long that Dorian was on the point of prompting him, poking him a little to see that he hadn't zoned out entirely.

"To tell _me_ what to do," the Bull said. "I just—ugh—"

Oh.

"Bull—"

"Hey, don't sweat it. I know that's not what people come to me for."

"Bull," Dorian said, more definite.

The Bull turned his head, expression unreadable.

"I'll have sex with you," Dorian said, and felt that his stomach fluttered a little at the words—at naming it as a definite possibility. Well—not his stomach, perhaps. A little lower. "I'd really very much like to. But I have a condition."

"Okay."

"I know very well you're in love with the Inquisitor," Dorian said. "So this is only for fun. A little bit of distraction between friends."

The Bull closed his eye. He breathed slowly. Slowly, he eased his shoulders down, and it seemed to Dorian that his relief was genuine. "Okay," he said again. "Yeah. Good call. Knew you'd get it."

"Come here," Dorian said, as gently as he felt able, and pulled the Bull into a slow kiss. 

 

 

 

Nothing terribly elaborate do be done, in truth. Dorian, prepared for so very many eventualities when it came to sex at parties, had not been remotely prepared for this one. He felt a little strange—a little warm—arousal had sunk deep into him, but it was wrapped in a delicate sort of feeling—care.

He said to the Bull: "Strip," and the Bull stripped—very methodically. Boots lined up by the foot of the bed. Ugly trousers folded and laid on top of his pack. 

He said: "Lie down on your back," and the Bull lay down.

Dorian sat himself on the edge of the mattress—looked the Bull over very slowly and methodically. He had so very many scars—more than one noticed, even on his chest and arms. A long one pulled down from hip to knee, healed very badly so that one could see the direction in which the blow had fallen, how it had snagged at the skin.

Dorian pulled a finger along the length of it, eyes on the Bull's face to see how he would react. There: a slight working of his throat. His face was quite still.

I wonder, Dorian thought, what you're usually like in bed.

Not this, I think.

People came to the Bull for a different sort of power game—a very physical one, Dorian assumed. Something rough, but not too rough.

Something fun.

Well, he'd promised the Bull that _this_ would be fun.

"Ex _cuse_ me," he said, in his very best Pavus voice. "I do think you might look at me. I'm very beautiful, and I require appreciation."

He flicked a finger at the Bull's hip, by way of bringing home the point.

The Bull's hand shifted on the bed beside Dorian's leg.

"But you needn't touch," he said, in the same tone.

The Bull's lips twitched. His eye blinked open, hazy for the first moments, quickly clearing.

"Not even gonna get naked?"

Dorian laughed. "Me? Oh, no."

"Damn," the Bull said amiably. He was grinning, finally—back with Dorian from whatever melancholy trail his mind had tried to wander off along.

 

 

 

One took one's time. That, at least, Dorian could offer. Outside, the party continued—downstairs in the taproom, likewise. Across the city, a hundred other such parties were in full swing, and certainly they wouldn't stop until dawn, if then.

The Bull's hands had curled against the sheets, nails dragging wrinkles like bow-waves across the fabric. Dorian's hands had this entire time been on the Bull—his stomach, soft fat and solid muscle—the surprisingly sharp bones of his hips—the sensitive insides of his thighs. Dorian knelt between these, drew the Bull's legs up over his own thighs, let him feel how Dorian's clothing dragged against his skin, leather and silk. 

"You really are unacceptably large, you know," he said. Pushed the Bull's right leg further up, until he could kiss the inside of the knee—no need to lift the Bull's hips further from the mattress. "You see? Ridiculous."

"Don't usually get complaints," the Bull said.

"You don't _usually_ want to be pushed around," Dorian pointed out, before he could catch the misstep. But the Bull didn't react, although he did shift on the bed, hips twisting. "Oh, stay still. You're going to have to play along. I doubt you want me to pin you to the bed in a genuinely restrictive way."

"You could touch my dick."

"Hah!"

Laughter.

Dorian turned his face to the Bull's ridiculously large leg—kissed it again, this time with a scrape of teeth. Oh, yes—there. That was very nice. The Bull shivering against him.

He tried a press of nails where he was holding the Bull's leg in place. Dragged them over the Bull's skin.

"Uh," the Bull said. "Yeah—" His hips moved again, as though he were helpless—letting himself be helpless.

 _Letting himself be helpless_ got to Dorian, as it turned out, considerably more effectively than actual helplessness, which he had rather a distaste for.

A little uncomfortable, in fact, to be fully clothed while quite so interested in the proceedings—but not a bad discomfort—a sort of game in itself, that. Neglecting his cock even as he neglected the Bull's, until they must both be aching equally.

Touching the Bull's cock, when he did so, in an exploratory way—dragging his fingers along it, drawing the foreskin back and forth over the head—until the Bull was cursing and laughing at once.

That seemed—right.

"There you are," Dorian said, smiling mischievously at him, and shifted the Bull's weight until he could move back—

Bent to the Bull's cock, the smell of him thick and sharp, washing pleasantly through Dorian so that he ached even more.

"Ah," Dorian said, with a theatrical sigh. "One day I'll teach you to bathe."

"You—" the Bull said, and, "oh, crap— _yeah_ —"

Dorian turned his focus entirely to Bull's cock—sank into the strain of it on his jaw, the soft skin against his tongue—the taste, not a wonder in and of itself, but which, in the moment—

Dorian had always enjoyed this act very much, whether given or received.

It seemed that the Bull was appreciating it too—his thighs were shaking—he'd forgotten himself enough to lift one of his hands from the bed, and although Dorian couldn't see, he had a fond suspicion that the Bull had pressed that hand to his mouth, judging by the quality of the grunts that escaped him when Dorian got something particularly right.

A breathless quality to them after a while, the Bull's stomach shifting as his muscles jerked. One heel kicked against the sheets.

"Dorian—" the Bull said—

Dorian sat back, replacing mouth with hand.

"There you are," he said again, and took as much pleasure in watching the way the Bull's face shifted when he came all over himself as he had taken in sucking the Bull's cock.


	6. Chapter 6

Skyhold was waking up when the Chargers rode back in, Dorian among them. Not that it was morning, but that there was a particular sort of energy took hold of the place before the Inquisitor's arrival, as Dorian had noticed—rather like the preparation for any other large delegation, but if possible even more intense. Josephine had high standards for the cleanliness of the keep at all times, often to her own deep frustration, but here it was: the hangings beaten out, the windows cleaned, clippings from the trees in the yard hauled off to be dried out for kindling. They must have returned only days before the Inquisitor was expected.

The Bull, first through the gates, was already taking this all in when Dorian came up beside him, reining his borrowed horse in a little too hard so that it danced restlessly in protest. He patted it in apology, and the Bull, looking over at their small performance, laughed.

Dorian considered him carefully, recontextualised him. Here was the Bull in Skyhold. Here was the Bull expecting the Inquisitor's company shortly. Here was the Bull, and Dorian had fairly recently sucked his cock.

Reassuring, in some ways, to find the particular equilibrium offered by that last point. One had attractive and unattached friends, and these things happened. They had it out there now.

But he hadn't forgotten how obscurely guilty he felt on some night or other in the tavern as he and the Bull leant into each other to share secrets, feeling that someone might judge him for—what, exactly?

"Ugh," the Bull said. "Gonna be another party for all the nobs who've been waiting for attention as soon as the boss's back, I guess."

"Is that Sera's word?" Dorian asked with interest.

The Bull shrugged. "Pretty good word."

"I can't argue that."

Dorian joined him on the ground, and Fidget took the horse's reins from him, patting it for her part on the upper leg, which was about as high as she could reach. She shot him a quick and slightly mysterious grin and the Bull a lazy salute, and ducked away before she could be questioned on either point.

"That one's going to be along for drinks with my closest boys soon," the Bull said. "You can tell because she's a little shit."

"You _like_ her," Dorian said.

"You figure?"

"I do."

"Guess I attract people who like backtalk."

"Take a bath," Dorian said, and swung on his heel with a little finger-wiggle of a wave offered over his shoulder as he went to retrieve his bags and request water for his own ablutions.

 

 

 

The Bull was quieter.

Easier to spot with Wintersend fresh in the memory. The same kind of watchful quietness that'd become normal in the months since the incident, leaving Dorian unable to reach the details of his mental state but aware that there was something troublesome there to be reached.

Not too difficult to hazard some guesses: Skyhold was a place filled with memories where Lydes had been neutral; the Inquisitor was soon to return when almost all of Dorian's interactions with the Bull had taken place in her absence.

One night had been taken for everyone to fall into an exhausted sleep, and the next was a return to business. Come evening Dorian had the opportunity to watch the Bull shrug off conversations—to watch him laugh—to watch him sag very slightly where he sat. The Chargers, after a cursory round or two of drinks together, dispersed through the fortress in search of new company after their period of enforced mutual intimacy.

Krem lingered, and was waved off too.

The Bull looked up and caught Dorian's eye.

"Hey," he said. "Didn't see you come in."

"Liar," Dorian said amiably.

The Bull shrugged. "Good to be back?"

"Maker, no. I was so enjoying the smell of damp horse."

"Liar."

Dorian regarded him. "You're doing it very well, but you know what I'm going to tell you next."

"My heart's not in it?"

Dorian gestured assent.

"Don't see why my heart's got anything to do with talking shit."

"Don't you."

The Bull turned his gaze back towards the tavern at large.

"Got a lecture from Josephine," he said. "In person. Usually you just get her assistant or an angry note. Pretty hot when she's angry. I mean, pretty hot in general, but _damn._ "

"If I could only be lectured by someone I find personally attractive, I feel my life would be much improved," Dorian said. "My lecture was from Helisma, which was several sorts of unnerving at once. My lack of systematic placement of my research materials is inconvenient, apparently."

The Bull grunted. "Don't do the tranquil voice," he said. "That shit's just creepy."

"That was rather the point. Anyway, I assume the lecture was about the shirtlessness?"

"You get to wear whatever you like to the ball, but I can't wear vitaar," the Bull said. "I call bullshit."

"Funny," Dorian said. "Hilarious."

"All the ladies like my vitaar," the Bull said. "Most of the guys too."

Dorian, who very much enjoyed the Bull's vitaar, offered no comment.

" _The image of the Inquisition,_ " the Bull said.

"From one person who takes pride in making people wonder whether I'm genuinely offended or not to another, I congratulate you on this speech," Dorian said. "Quite inscrutable."

The Bull laughed. "Yeah, that's what she said."

The laughter didn't make for any sort of momentum. It died quickly, and the Bull settled into himself again. It became a strangely still evening, a breath drawn in and held. Tomorrow or the day after, everyone would return.

 

 

 

"So," the Bull said. "You wanna fuck?"

His accent lent a strange delicacy to the word _fuck_ , the sound of it so exact that Dorian was briefly amazed despite the more pressing contextual meaning of the thing.

Catching up, he blinked. Collected himself. Well, he'd rather thought—there had been a tone of—never mind. Clearly not a one night business after all. "Certainly not," he said. "I detest it. Your room or mine?"

There was a shuttered moment there. Very short indeed. But still.

"Yours," the Bull said. "So long as you've put the sacrificial altars and shit away."

Dorian's, then.

More rough and tumble than their first effort. More what Dorian might have imagined, except for the fact that it was the Bull slammed against the wall, the Bull held down on the bed—by the horns, rather a master-stroke on Dorian's part, to judge by the Bull's wide-eyed reaction. It made for a nice way to rub his cock against the Bull's face, not offering the Bull the chance to suck him off but highlighting the possibility and highlighting the denial at once.

Naturally, the Bull could overpower Dorian easily.

Clearly, he didn't want to. Pushed only when Dorian demanded it by pulling first. Groaned more than once when Dorian let him go.

"You're going to fuck me," Dorian gasped, mouth against the Bull's. Paused for a kiss. "You're going to have me on my back, and you're going to put that unreasonably large cock of yours in me, and I am going to make you _scream_."

" _Damn_ ," the Bull breathed. 

Something of a process to get there. Dorian lay back with his thighs spread wide, pulled up over the Bull's so that his legs framed the Bull's waist and his arse was off the mattress. Affected an air of nonchalance as the Bull slid his fingers in and out, considering the Bull's bowed head and the awkward twist of his arm. Smirking when the Bull looked up to check—how Dorian was doing? Whether Dorian was pleased?

Oh, Dorian was pleased. Play-wrestling had done marvelous things for his cock, and the Bull was good with his fingers, and the heat between his legs felt extremely promising. One didn't really _need_ the Bull's cock when this was building so wonderfully. But it was hardly a question of needs for Dorian.

"Oh, by all means," he said, touching his fingers to his lips, flicking them away dismissively as the Bull watched him. "Take all year. Certainly. I'm sure the world won't end before you finally get your cock in."

"You're such a—"

"Did I tell you to talk?"

Yes: laughter. One should laugh in bed with friends, or what was the point? One might as well still be in Tevinter.

The stretch of the Bull's cock pressing into him made him lose his smirk to a long moan, but the Bull wasn't laughing at that moment either: was bent forward, face invisible to Dorian, a hand on the bed and a hand curled around Dorian's thigh, angling his body—digging in, the nails blunt but solid.

They both shuddered for a moment.

Recovered, in a scrambling movement, and collided into a biting kiss, Dorian pulling himself up by one of the Bull's horns, the abrupt movement shifting the Bull's cock inside him in a way that made him curse. 

"Clearly," Dorian said, with great injustice and equally great pleasure, "I need to do everything myself here." And, tugging at the Bull, allowed them both to indulge in the fantasy that Dorian was the one forcing the Bull down onto his back, rather than the Bull easily allowing it. 

His bed was broader than the one they'd fucked on in Lydes, which helped the general logistics rather—gave the Bull plenty of space to spread his weight, gave Dorian a certain confidence in his ability to avoid falling off the bed in the middle of riding the man, even allowing for the fact that the Bull was too broad to make that particular act as easy as one generally found it, being as one was both in good shape and enthusiastic.

His hands on the Bull's stomach for leverage. The Bull's hands were restless on Dorian's thighs, his hips—the Bull's whole body responded to every roll of Dorian's hips—

Dorian grit his teeth against the blooming possibility of orgasm—chased, instead, after the Bull's pleasure—

The Bull's nails dragged red scratches down Dorian's legs, and Dorian hissed, grabbed at his hands when he tried to pull them away, smacked at his side. "Try harder," he said, and the Bull shuddered violently this time, and came—came—with his hands clenching convulsively against Dorian's skin until there must, surely, be several kinds of marks left behind.

Later, Dorian came on the Bull's face, and then, cleaned up, they had another drink and a stimulating argument about cyphers. Oh, don't be so idiotic, surely that one was cracked in the last _age_. Oh, you're so sure about that, are you—?

The Bull, making his excuses at last, seemed sorry to go. Left Dorian to the luxury of a little late-night reading. To shifting on the bed to feel the way his body flared into awareness of the different places he'd had the Bull bruise him or scratch him or bite him. He had always enjoyed this part: the space to sink into the aftereffects of good sex, unobserved, the act not so distant that one's body had entirely stopped humming with it.

 

 

 

It was afternoon when the Inquisitor returned, and with her, mercifully, Sera—Sera who jumped onto his back and wrapped her ridiculous limbs around his neck and demanded all the gossip before she'd even taken off the more pointy metal pieces of her gear. All the rest, also, of course—Varric nodding his way before turning to say something presumably both humorous and dismissive to one of the merchants who'd been trying to get his attention—Blackwall, sullen and distant—

"It was a _Warden_ thing," Sera said, dropping back onto her feet just before Dorian's pride could give way to his self-preservation and demand that she take mercy on his spine. "A shitty, shitty warden thing. There were demons. And sand. And some cackling shite too impressed with his own stick. Bull got lucky."

One's first impulse was innuendo, of course. Oh, the Bull very much _did_. But it wouldn't quite do, somehow—not with the Inquisitor right there—not when, if one must be honest, one remained unable to fathom what had gone wrong between her and the Bull. What sort of disloyalty this could be classed as he wasn't certain, but disloyal was all the same the best word he could find.

"And I didn't?"

"Pfft," Sera said. "You've never liked anywhere we've been. But you'd have liked mouthing off. Some really good spots for fancy talk. Wasted. Guess you'll get a chance. It's going to be a whole big thing. Armies probably. So many swords."

The Inquisitor had moved away, up towards the main hall where her advisors would be waiting. The Bull, who had hung back, came forward—took Sera's enthusiastically physical greeting with calm amusement—shouted something to Cassandra and said something else, in a more deferential voice, to Vivienne. Dorian wasn't paying a great deal of attention, in all honesty. It was the fact that the Bull had hung back at all that interested him.

"Isn't it always," he said. "Come on. Don't you want to throw things off the battlements and see what lands first?"

"Alright," Sera said. "Alright. Now you're talking. Wait up, I'll go find Widdle. She loves throwing things."


	7. Chapter 7

How many conversations one had in those first days alone. One had stored some charming little nugget of information for a returning friend—one was examined by Madame de Fer on the many failings of the Orlesian nobility and could give her the pleasure of knowing that they were all in hopeless shape without her guiding hand to steady them. Yes, the fashions this season are quite frightful. No, they aren't anything like as clever as they think—

"I wonder who that reminds me of," Vivienne said with a delicately raised eyebrow and a small smile.

"Solas, naturally," Dorian said, and her smile didn't shrink, which was more or less approval— 

Sera was a constant factor, but an unpredictable one. He had realised only belatedly that she would probably notice the—whatever there was to notice about his sex life. Not a problem, oh no—it would win him some points in the size contest, and provide some thoroughly humiliating jokes at his expense, and possibly spawn a new secret handshake that he would forget in two days, and all of these were fine things. But Sera liked to _talk_ —

And why shouldn't she talk?

Why shouldn't any of them? Vivienne, scrutinising the Bull quietly. Varric hoping for a thread to tug at to entertain himself—ah, it'll make a great story one day, because the world sure isn't going to end. 

And if Cadash were to listen—

Well, and what then? The shape of the rift between her and the Bull is unknowable. Permanent, by the Bull's words and her actions. But not because of a lack of affection on the Bull's side. And she?

 

 

 

Dorian considered the case. Considered it at breakfast, with the voices of the Inquisition's people bouncing from the stone walls until they became an indistinct wave of noise keeping one from speaking to anyone but the person at one's side: Blackwall hunched to Dorian's right and frowning deeply at his food; on Dorian's left, the Bull. Naturally the Bull had something to say to Blackwall; naturally this put him rather in Dorian's personal space.

"You reek," Dorian said with acidity, knocking him away, and he very much expected innuendo to follow—innuendo would in the ordinary way of things have followed—but the Bull only grunted and sat back, shrugged at Blackwall and made a hand gesture that one hoped meant something to both of them. Considered the silence—considered the company—considered the possibility that the Bull was in some obscure way following a cue he had taken from Dorian in remaining silent. Considered the possibility that the Bull simply didn't wish to admit to any of it.

One had sex with one's friends. One's friends were in the ordinary way of things more like allies, certainly, and also very much of the understanding that they would cheerfully murder one another in the right circumstances; one's friends were in the ordinary way of things unhappily and dutifully married, and very much disinclined to talk about anything. And one had left Tevinter. And one was silent.

He considered it further with Sera and Dagna as Sera shouted with a horror that was probably largely unfeigned about Dagna's attempts to get Dorian to contribute to her research. It wasn't Sera's antics that he considered, although he laughed about them: it was Dagna's cheerful comfort. He very well knew that Sera was sleeping with a considerable proportion of the women in Skyhold, and also that she and Dagna had some sort of arrangement that mostly involved bees and improbable sex acts, although one did have to hope that these two things didn't occupy the same space at any given time. They were not precisely engaged in a romance, but Dagna very much did smack Sera's arse in response to a truly incredible piece of innuendo, and certainly did then grin at Dorian about it.

He considered it with the Bull in his bed again. Considered the Bull: wrists bound behind him by special request, weight slumped forward so that his shoulders were pressed into the mattress and his arse raised. It angled his head awkwardly, horns keeping him from turning it as much as might be comfortable. He huffed against the mattress, grunted—again, hard, through his teeth, as Dorian angled his fingers in the Bull's arse. Considered this: that he was already learning that the Bull didn't respond to _would you like_ just now half as well as he did to _I'm going to_. I'm going to make you come on my fingers, Bull, and then I'm going to do it again, and _then_ I will put my cock in you—to name the order of business at hand, even if breaks were going to be necessary, not least for the sake of everyone's knees.

Considered the way the Bull tended to become terribly pliant in bed, even when he made it look like forceful athleticism: responded to Dorian's smallest signals, bent easily unless told to fight. The peculiarity of it, when one considered the Bull's general person. Oh, he wanted things. But he had meant it, that uncertainty. 

That need to be controlled.

Well: it became an athletic night in the end, and the Bull became an overstimulated mess, and Dorian forgot to consider so very much of anything.

 

 

 

"About Cadash," Dorian said. Kept his hand on the Bull's bare stomach, stroked his thumb back and forth over a fine scar there. He hesitated.

Regretted, rather, speaking. The Bull had come down from his last orgasm, had stilled, all tremors gone. But one didn't need to ruin the quiet of the aftermath.

The stillness deepened to the edge of discomfort. Stumbled over it.

"It's still done. Like I told you."

The Bull's horns scratched slightly against the headboard as he shifted his head; he shifted minutely down the bed until they were unobstructed again. Of course—it must be a common problem for him.

"I see."

"You're not a secret," the Bull said. "I get to fuck who I like. She gets to fuck who she likes. We're not gonna be fucking each other. There's some Tevinter crap there, right? Only fucking people you're not allowed to."

"Excuse _me—_ "

"Uh. Sorry."

Dorian shrugged. His mind returned to the central point from which the Bull had momentarily distracted it:

But you're in love—

"I shall see to it," Dorian said, "that the criers of Val Royeaux are informed upon the instant. Let it be known to the people that Dorian Pavus' cock is the finest the Iron Bull has ever encountered—"

He thought, for a moment, that it wouldn't work—that the words would only tangle them further in this uneasiness. For a moment, the Bull didn't react—

"Ah, crap," he said. "I can't believe I didn't think of that one."

"I'm not hearing a denial of the substance of the message," Dorian said. "No, don't, I won't hear it now. You had your moment. My penis has already won. Brandy?"

 

 

 

A new anxiety: certainly, one was not a secret— 

And yet— 

It was just after the fifth bell when Inquisitor Cadash came to find Dorian—for the purpose of some debriefing or other, one assumed—to request the results of the research she had left him to in her absence—something of the sort. She found him where he was accustomed to sit in the library, watching the dust motes shimmer in the sun above the pages of his book. 

Under his clothes, scratches stretched in aching lines across his skin, intimate and lingering as kisses. Prized, having pushed the Bull far enough for him to clutch so roughly. Yes: it had been three times. Twice more than Dorian had expected—and what of it? Good sex was not to be sniffed at. There would be a fourth, almost certainly; a fifth, probably.

"You seem busy," Cadash said, perfunctory as a secretary. Tired, though; and why wouldn't she be tired? Long travel, terrible threats, and of course—"Deep in thought? I can come back."

Dorian stared at his hand where it lay flat on the page, partially obscuring the twisting lines of glyphs. The dark lake of a bruise above the fourth and fifth metacarpals where, careless in the heat of the moment, his hand had caught on the frame of the bed. A stifled groan. Breathless laughter—that, also, prized.

He twitched his hand away from the page; shut the book one-handed so that the snap of it startled the ravens on the floor above into rustling, shuffling motion.

An assistant in another alcove coughed.

Anxiety pooled in Dorian's lungs.

"Certainly not," Dorian said. "I was hoping to speak with you, in fact. About the Bull."

"Oh, really," Cadash said. "Pretty sure I've had more than enough talks about the Bull, actually. About one a week since I left Skyhold, and more before that. Most of them came from people I like better than you."

Blackwall, tactless and well-meaning. Sera, who could make Cadash laugh. Cassandra, presumably, although Andraste alone knew how awkward that would have been. Of every mage in the stronghold, though, only Vivienne might be ranked among the Inquisitor's truly close friends. And of course, Vivienne was also Bull's. Had she expressed an opinion?

Did she know anything?

Dorian shrugged. "One day you'll come to see how charming my personality is. But not, I fear, today. And still: I do need to speak with you."

She waved her hand sharply, like swatting at an overly familiar fly. Assent. Turned with a quick jerk of her head towards the still half-ruined rooms above the gardens.

The weather had turned mild in the last week, and in Skyhold the plants hung on through the long winter. The room she chose filled with trailing vines, cascading down from the corner where the roof had given way. Cadash, with her arms crossed, leaned against the wall; a figure from some myth, a weathered statue, wreathed in living green sunlight. Her red hair gleamed. What was she afraid of, this woman? There was something. Something secret and dark, held close as a lover. Closer.

Dorian stilled his restless hands—turned his face towards the sun for a moment as though he could draw strength from it.

"I would not generally consider my personal affairs anyone else's concern," he said, "but things being as they are, I feel I must tell you—"

"You're fucking him," Cadash said.

"Crudely put." Anxiety, anxiety, filling him until he could choke on it.

Cadash's mouth twisted, her lips pressed thin. "If you're trying to say it's more romantic than that—"

The Bull's hands clawing at the sheets on either side of Dorian's head, his breath coming in grunts. Dorian's foot kicking at the Bull's arse, come _on_ , you can do better than that—I should just find a toy and fuck myself if that's all you've got—make you _watch_ —that had been after Dorian rode him, and Dorian had already been so very sore, and—

"It's not," Dorian said.

"Then you're right," Cadash said. "It's none of my damn business. I assume you weren't doing this while he and I were involved."

"I may not be a very good person," Dorian said, "but the Bull is. We're friends. This is simply an—arrangement. A recent one. But as it seems likely to continue, I thought I ought to let you know rather than sneak around in the dark like a petty thief. I respect you, for all our differences. And I'm not ashamed."

He directed this last at himself. At the Bull, although the man was absent. _Some Tevinter thing._

But it was Cadash who flinched, shoulders tightening. Her right hand closed convulsively on her left sleeve, green spilling between her fingers.

"Fuck whoever you like," she said.

"You're the one he's in love with," Dorian said. "You could snap your fingers and he'd go right back to you. I wouldn't stop him."

"Don't talk about what you don't understand," Cadash said, with considerable bitterness. "You've said your piece. Carry on with him. I mean it. Fuck knows he needs a project. Now go and do something useful."

She was in such pain. He should know—remember Rilienus—remember curling forward on the floor of one's room with hands clenched, grinding one's teeth to keep from screaming—remember using fury to smother tears, burning the lot of them.

It had been long enough, now, that one might expect to find the edge of it blunted. But it kept its sharpness in her, didn't it—just as it kept its sharpness in the Bull.

I wonder if I'm going to have to strangle them both, Dorian thought, stepping out into the open, the garden spread below.

I wonder if I'm going to have to slam their heads together with force magic until they kiss.

What is one to do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE NOTE! I'm likely to skip either next week's update or the update for the following week, because I'm in a deadline-heavy period & also travelling soon. Please don't be alarmed if next week is a no-show - I haven't forgotten you.


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